Corista: Clinical Workflow Suite for Pathologists

To truly understand Elizabeth Wingard’s vision for a digital environment supporting the practice of pathology, we have to start at the origin of her story. A technology-focused entrepreneur, Elizabeth sought to recast the digital transformation that occurred in radiology by solving the unique challenges of pathology—laying the cornerstone for Corista. Having seen first-hand the remarkable benefits of digital PACS to Radiology, Corista has sought to deliver the benefits, for digital pathology. The way to do so is to attack and solve the unique and sometimes vexing challenges inherent in pathology practice. For the past 130 years, pathologists have been viewing images through microscopes. The practice requires three components be present simultaneously: the pathology slides (glass slides with tissue stained samples), a microscope for viewing, and a pathologist with knowledge, often specialized, in that particular tissue type. Taking the step to create digital images of the slide (via a Whole Slide Image Scanner) solves a fundamental problem, but does not create an entire solution. Digitized pathology images are massive in size, so providing secure interconnectivity between geographic locations and devices was a major challenge. Another, perhaps even more significant challenge was how to integrate the entire pathology practice into the overall system of care—within the hospital’s information systems, and across hospital systems for each individual patient. Addressing these challenges is Corista’s comprehensive and award-winning clinical workflow platform, which combines an extensive suite of workflow capabilities for pathology, integrating multiple facilities, physicians, whole slide imaging (WSI) scanners and laboratory information systems (LIS) into a unified environment.

Corista has broken new ground with its comprehensive DP3^® platform. With this intuitive platform, laboratories accept and process tissue specimens, create glass slides and digitize them using WSI scanners. The digital images are posted for instant access and integrated with the patient’s data from the LIS, eliminating the traditional time delay inherent when labs send physical slides to geographically dispersed experts for review. DP3 also provides an intuitive interface for doctors to provide notes, and detailed descriptions, review Tumor Boards, remediate cases in a Quality Assurance process, thereby improving both the quality and speed of care.